How much would you pay not to die of old age ever?

If you are offered a "cure" for dying of old age, how much would you pay for it? It is not a cure against all causes of death - accidents, acute diseases, etc. can cause death. Additionally, suicide could still work. Aging continues, but it is much slower and asymptotic to infinity. Would you pay anything for the rest of your life to be like that?

I won't, what's the point of taking it anyway. The older you grow the weaker your metabolism becomes, the cure just slows down the expiring process of the body but it will still expire. Since it would expire slower than before you would have to bear a lot more pain than if you wouldn't be had took it. In addition to that, you have to pay for it!? . Unless and until you have an ultimate project to change the world or something like that and you need additional 5 years, then you can consider taking it.

If you are offered a "cure" for dying of old age, how much would you pay for it? It is not a cure against all causes of death - accidents, acute diseases, etc. can cause death. Additionally, suicide could still work. Aging continues, but it is much slower and asymptotic to infinity. Would you pay anything for the rest of your life to be like that?

If you are offered a "cure" for dying of old age, how much would you pay for it? It is not a cure against all causes of death - accidents, acute diseases, etc. can cause death. Additionally, suicide could still work. Aging continues, but it is much slower and asymptotic to infinity. Would you pay anything for the rest of your life to be like that?

What is meant by "acute" disease, and what does "asymptotic to infinity" mean?

Staff: Mentor

What is meant by "acute" disease, and what does "asymptotic to infinity" mean?

What I mean by (fatal) acute disease is a malady that can cause death in an otherwise healthy adult who is not "old." Deadly epidemics is a primary example. But it could also be e. g. fast-growing terminal cancer. (In the latter case if someone is dying of e. g. fast-growing terminal brain tumor, that's more or less like an accident having happened to them.)

Today relatively few people actually die of old age, most die from diseases that would not generally be fatal except for old age. I will refer to them as NFDEFOA (Non-Fatal Disease Except For Old Age). Pneumonia is an example. Another may be embolism. More generally I will posit that NFDEFOA can lead to death when "multiple complications are present" (MCAP). Assume that MCAP is caused only by old age. Asymptoticity says that "you will not ever reach to a point where you will die from an NFDEFOA because of MCAP." Another example may be bone density. Suppose that there is a threshold for bone density, above which one would be safe from endogenous ("spontaneous") fractures that old people are prone to. Asymptocity says that someone would never cross that threshold.

Staff: Mentor

At some point, maybe 25 or so years from now, I'd probably need to move into an assisted-living facility. I have no idea what those cost nowadays, let alone 25 years from now. It's been more than 20 years since my mother-in-law spent a few years in one before moving into a nursing home when she could no longer walk on her own.

If you are offered a "cure" for dying of old age, how much would you pay for it? It is not a cure against all causes of death - accidents, acute diseases, etc. can cause death. Additionally, suicide could still work. Aging continues, but it is much slower and asymptotic to infinity. Would you pay anything for the rest of your life to be like that?

The trap is that the first thing coming in mind, is that somehow we'll live as we are now - in a logical abstraction fashion, forever. After some milliseconds the bare truth is revealed: there will be no advantage to that whatsoever. Just a pure torture. So, why anyone could want it??

At some point, maybe 25 or so years from now, I'd probably need to move into an assisted-living facility. I have no idea what those cost nowadays, let alone 25 years from now. It's been more than 20 years since my mother-in-law spent a few years in one before moving into a nursing home when she could no longer walk on her own.

So as I understand it you'd demand to be paid "the cost of living." In this thread I do not wish to demean the process of moving through life. Surely it costs to grow old. Speaking generally, not necessarily about @jtbell, isn't it logical to think that our expected income-generating potential will never actually become zero, or negative? Many, perhaps most "jobs" in today's post-industrial economy are not menial but cerebral. If anything we can expect the menial/cerebral ratio to decrease further in time. Does that not mean that ageing adults' income potential will not become zero or negative over time?

***I am not trying to sell anything whether a product or an idea. I'd like to find out about the net present value of "perpetual existence." ***

These two statements contradict. Aging as a biological process is intimately linked, if not defined, by a variety of health concerns. You can be a elderly and healthy but the baseline of good health for a 60 year old will be worse than that of a 20 year old.

In any case my answer would likely be: whatever tax I can afford. Given that my nation has socialised healthcare any treatment that prevents aging (and the costly health complications it brings) would almost certainly be available on the NHS.

I would imagine that people would pay the same or more money for a 'cure' then they would normally pay for medical aid that you would associate with aging. You have 2 options here, you could pay X amount of money on surgery, medicine, care, and what-not or you could pay the same amount for a cure that eliminates the (most likely) need for these expenses. So if you paid the same either way I would prefer the cure because maybe it is more reliable and also less painful. (it is painless right?) I would not want to live beyond 115 years though. This is an opinion. :)

I would pay a great deal of money to stop aging altogether. (Not exactly your scenario, I know.)
Not so much that I would be in debt for more than 40 years, though. (So slightly more than the price of a nice house.)
The trick would be getting the money. I can't mortgage myself. :<

These two statements contradict. Aging as a biological process is intimately linked, if not defined, by a variety of health concerns. You can be a elderly and healthy but the baseline of good health for a 60 year old will be worse than that of a 20 year old.

Yes, I find it confusing, and can't really figure out what's being offered here. At 61, I'm not in bad health, but am not as invulnerable to any health stress as I was at 20. It seems to me to free someone from the hazards of aging you would have to freeze their age at about 20 to 25. After that, everyone is already on their way toward system breakdowns due to aging. At 30, most people can start to make out slight wrinkles around the eyes, for example, meaning the cells aren't 'rebounding' as they used to.

I can't put a dollar amount on it, but I have a perpetual motion device of the second kind that I'd be willing to barter.

But a cure for ageing is actually plausible. There are many known examples in nature of organisms which do not age. Naked mole rats show far less symptoms of ageing than most mammals, and are almost immune to cancer and other ageing-related diseases. Ageing is not required by the second law of thermodynamics, but is a biological process than can be altered.